Gillis has hired sleep doctors to help the team deal with fatigue on road trips, and had players wear "sleep bracelets" to track their heart rates when sleeping in order to figure out how many hours of sleep they need to get to perform their best. There is apparently something called a "Human Performance Plan" that's supposed to help players perform at their best in the third period as opposed to earlier in the game.

As far as player movements go, the Manny Malhotra signing struck me as a Moneyball move: faceoff wins for puck possession and all the good things that it brings.

If Gillis signed Manny for 500K, yes it would've been. But his salary is 2.5 million per year.